Our analysis will be based on two well-adopted, complementary approaches in EGT, namely, evolutionary stable strategies (ESS analysis) [1]}, [2]} and finite population dynamics [3]}, [4]}. While the former allows simple assessment of when a strategy can resist invasion from all other strategies in the population (i.e. being an ESS), it does not capture the detailed stochastic dynamics among all strategies in co-presence. This drawback is well captured with the latter approach. We will determine when participating in a costly commitment and complying with it, is ESS and promotes the evolution of cooperation.
We will examine which incentive, reward of commitment compliant behaviours or punishment of non-compliant ones, is more efficient for promoting the evolution of cooperation and when.
Next, we will study whether this cooperation outcome can be enhanced by sparing part of the incentive budget for encouraging participation in a commitment despite reducing the incentive budget for commitment compliant behaviours.
Finally, we will examine the impact of noise in a participation decision on the stability of commitment compliant strategies and the overall levels of cooperation.
